Fiber expansion halted after Obama's call for treating broadband as a utility.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said today that his company will "pause" investments in fiber networks until the net neutrality debate is over. The statement came two days after President Obama urged the Federal Communications Commission to reclassify broadband as a utility and impose bans on blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.

"We can't go out and invest that kind of money deploying fiber to 100 cities not knowing under what rules those investments will be governed," Stephenson told investors, according to Reuters. "We think it is prudent to just pause and make sure we have line of sight and understanding as to what those rules would look like." Stephenson was speaking at a Wells Fargo event.

AT&T said in April that it would "expand its ultra-fast fiber network to up to 100 candidate cities and municipalities nationwide," but it never promised to build in all of them. Buildouts were dependent on local officials cooperating with the company. AT&T has also claimed that it will bring fiber to "two million additional locations" if the federal government approves its purchase of DirecTV. But AT&T has never said how many customers will get AT&T fiber if the deal isn't approved, making it impossible to judge whether the potential investment would be an increase over existing plans.

AT&T and other Internet service providers have argued that treating broadband as a utility will force them to limit network investments, and they threatened to sue to stop a reclassification.

Promoted Comments

This, of course, implies that they ever started that 100-city fiber buildout in the first place.

This, a million times this.

ATT wasn't even doing any expanding...they were saying there might do some expanding if they got everything they wanted. Now they're trying to turn around and say they're stopping the thing they hadn't actually done yet!